Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I life my lamp beside the golden door.

Emma Lazarus

Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I life my lamp beside the golden door.

Emma Lazarus

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Lecture: Immigration

Next CLASS: DECEMBER 10TH

ImmigrationImmigration

• Centers around the link between American ideals of citizenship, freedom, and independence -- and American realities of class and race.

• Americans' debates about "fitness" for citizenship, freedom, and independence and how those considerations and debates, in turn, shaped different immigrants' experiences.

• The Push & Pull of ImmigrationImmigration WavesDifferent characteristics, different responses• Law and Race

• Immigration Restriction• None, qualitative, quantitative . . .• Relationship b/ween race, eugenics and immigration

ImmigrationImmigrationInternational migration is the exception, not the rule, for two major reasons:

The first and most powerful is inertia: Most people lack the desire and drive to leave home and move away from family and friends.

[NB: modern]The second is the fact that governments regulate movements over their borders: virtually every government has passports, visas, and border controls, and a significant capacity to regulate migration.

However, migration is a natural and predictable response to differences between countries of origin and destination--differences in resources and jobs, in demographic growth, and in opportunities and human rights.

Immigration is thus driven by the Push and Pull forces at work between two peoples, which are determined by the historical forces at play.

ImmigrationImmigrationThere are four major types of immigrants, historically:

The largest category is relatives of U.S. residents. Of the 850,000 immigrants admitted in FY2000, 583,000 or 69 percent had family members in the U.S. who sponsored their admission by asking the the U.S. government to admit them.

The second-largest category was employment-based, the 107,000 immigrants and their families admitted for economic or employment reasons (13 percent)

The third group was diversity and other immigrants, 93,000 or 11 percent, most of whom were admitted because they entered a lottery open to citizens of countries that sent fewer than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the previous five years

The fourth group is refugees and asylees, the 59,000 foreigners who were granted a chance to start anew as immigrants in the United States because they faced persecution at home.

Push - PullPush - PullWhat “Push” Factors did we see in Indentured servants emigrating to U.S. in colonial Period?

What “Pull” Factors?

NOTE: These Factors drive people in “waves”

First Wave: Prior to 1790

Second Wave: 1820 - 1860 - “American Letters”

Third Wave: 1880 - 1914

Fourth Wave: 1965 - ??

U.S. ImmigrationU.S. ImmigrationUS immigration policies went through three major phases:

laissez-faire, qualitative restrictions, and quantitative restrictions.

During its first hundred years, from 1780 to 1875, the United States had a laissez-faire immigration policy-

states, private employers, shipping companies and railroads, and churches all promoted immigration to the United States.

The federal government encouraged immigration in various ways:

subsidizing railroad construction - (recruitment of immigrant workers).

High tariffs (kept out European goods, created a demand for workers)

Fill the army (immigrants = third of the regulars in the 1840s, even higher proportion in state militias)

Note the Tension . . .Note the Tension . . .Franklin's warning in 1753 about the Germans in Pennsylvania:

. . . those who came hither are generally the most stupid of

their own nation, and as ignorance is often attended with

great credulity, when knavery would mislead it, and with

suspicion when honesty would set it right; and, few of the

English understand the German language, and so cannot address

them either from the press or pulpit, it is almost impossible

to remove any prejudices they may entertain. . . . Not being

used to liberty, they know not how to make modest use of it.

Franklin feared that the Germans would eventually outnumber the English, "and even our government will become precarious."

The mass migration of the 19th century (2nd/3rd waves) was the result of a near perfect match between the needs of a new country and overcrowded Europe. Europe at this time was undergoing drastic social change and economic reorganization, severely compounded by overpopulation. An extraordinary increase in population coincided with the breakup of the old agricultural order

At approximately the same time, the industrial revolution was underway, moving from Great Britain to Western Europe, and then to Southern and Eastern Europe [NB: this tracks the evolution of U.S. Immigration]

America, on the other hand, had a boundless need for people to push back the frontier, to build the railways, to defend unstable boundaries, and to populate new States.

2nd Wave “Pull & Push” to U.S. Immigration

Immigration Waves in US HistoryImmigration Waves in US History

• antebellum, 1840-1860—largely northern European, especially England, Ireland and Germany—approx. 4.5 million

• late 1890-1920—largely Southern and Eastern European, including Polish and Russian Jews, Italian, Greek—approx. 14.5

million

• also Asian immigrants in the late 19th-early 20th century, in much fewer numbers (for example, Chinese immigrants built

US railroads)

• Immigration Act of 1924 establishes national quotas for immigration - immigration drops sharply

• after 1965 immigration act reform - immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia outnumber those from

Europe

• 1840-50: Irish Potato Famine – mostly Irish Catholics come.

• The influx of Roman Catholics in the 1840’s set off the first organized anti-foreign movement in the nation’s history, the “Know Nothing “ movement embodied in the American Party.

• American Letters”

• 1850: Mexican - American War - U.S. seizes 1/3 of Mexico

• Mexican border relatively open until 1920

• 1840-1870: Chinese Rush to U.S.

– 1839-42: Opium War with Britain & Taiping Rebellion 1850-64

– Agricultural crisis and rice shortage

– Between the fall of Napoleon and World War I, from 30 to 35 million immigrants

2nd Wave “Push” to U.S. Immigration

Immigration & RaceImmigration & Race

What is this man’s ethnic background?

Cartoon Fragment

Entire Cartoon,

1864

Entire Cartoon,

1864

Immigration & RaceImmigration & Race

• Immigrants satisfy US economic & social needs:

• The Frontier and Westward Expansion

• The Homestead Act of 1862 made western lands available to immigrants as well as the native-born.

• The Contract Labor Law passed in 1864: 1st comprehensive federal immigration law to work frontier

• Encouraged immigration by advancing money for passage.(RR, mining, farming, e.g., Chinese recruited for Calif gold rush 1848-1882).

• 1870s: Companies recruit in Mexico in part to replace Chinese, but mostly seasonal.

•The American the frontier was closed by 1890 - Most newcomers found factory jobs in cities in the northeast and midwest.

• By 1910, immigrants were over half of all employees in steel and meat packing, and foreign-born men were over half of the work force in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Detroit

2nd Wave: “Pull” for Immigrants

• Up to 1850s – 85% of immigrants were English, Scotch Irish, and German; all other groups suspect because “Not like us.”

• After WWI: door slammed shut:

– 1900-1915: 15 million enter U.S.

– 1915-1930: 5.5 million enter U.S.

• Limits usually accompanied by anti immigrant, xenophobic campaigns e.g., anti Chinese movement in midst of 1870 US depression.

2nd Wave of U.S. Immigration

Segway . . .Segway . . .Official, albeit imperfect, immigration statistics were recorded beginning in 1820 by the Department of State, which continued to perform this task until 1870.

The immigration data collection function was subsequently transferred to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Statistics, and from there to the Bureau of Immigration, housed first in the Department of Labor and subsequently it to the Department of Justice.

Data collection began in 1819 in response to a Federal law requiring ship captains arriving from abroad to submit a manifest to the customs collector showing the sex, occupation, age, and country of all passengers aboard. Initially, data was recorded only on vessels arriving at Eastern ports; Western ports were included beginning in 1850. During the Civil War, data was available only from ports under Federal control. Immigration over land borders was recorded haphazardly until around 1910.

First Passports?

Border Patrol?

3rd Wave: U. S. Policies3rd Wave: U. S. PoliciesThe US began to enact qualitative restrictions on immigrants in the 1870s.

In 1875, convicts and prostitutes were barred.

The Immigration Act of 1882 added paupers and "mental defectives” to the groups of undesirables

For the first time the U. S. barred immigration from a particular country: Chinese immigration was halted for 10 years, a ban that was kept until 1943.

The importation of foreign workers coming with pre-arranged work contracts was banned in the 1880s.

By 1900, the major issue = slowing the influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.

There were Congressionally sponsored studies that concluded that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were “inferior”

Congressional leaders wanting to restrict immigration argued that newcomers should be literate—able to read and write in some language—and Congress, starting in 1897, enacted literacy tests, but they were vetoed by three presidents, starting with Grover Cleveland. President Wilson twice vetoed the literacy test, but his veto was overridden in 1917:

after that date, anyone over sixteen who could not read in any language was refused entry.

In 1921, Congress imposed numerical restrictions based on National Origin

in 1924, an Immigration Act set annual immigration at up to 150,000, plus accompanying wives and children.

The national origins formula prescribed that the maximum number of immigrants from any country in the Eastern Hemisphere would be "a number which bears the same ratio to 150,000 as the number of inhabitants in the United States in 1920 having that national origin bears to the number of white inhabitants of the United States."

3rd Wave: U. S. Policies3rd Wave: U. S. Policies

• 1890-1924: Period of greatest immigration

• Ellis Island: 1892 – 1924:

– 5000 enter daily, maybe 1 in 50 rejected

– 12 million had entered by 1954 when the Center closed

• WWI generates Italian, Slav, Greek, Polish, Jewish immigrants (Southern Europe)

U.S. Immigration: Segway II

1917: Literacy Act – very exclusionary

– need to write or speak English and another language

– aims to exclude southern Europeans & Jews & excluded all Asians, including Indians, Malaysians, etc. Even though 12% of US Army is Italian.

– 9th Proviso: exception for farm workers, mostly Mexicans.

• 1918-1921: Red scare aggravates fear & anti-immigrant reaction.

• 1921-1924: Quota Law –

• 1st time numerical limits; uses 1910 proportion, favoring north Europeans.

• Border Patrol created; Mexican border becomes a tangible reality, though still permeable.

Post- WWI - U.S. Limits Immigration

1924 - the Johnson Immigration Act severely limits based upon:

Racial superiority of Anglo Saxons

Immigrants cause lowering of wages

Do not assimilate

Threat to national identity & unity

Limits immigrants to 2% of their national group in 1890, thus against south & east Europeans

U.S. Limits Immigration

Immigration Restriction > Annual Immigration Quotas, 1924Immigration Restriction > Annual Immigration Quotas, 1924

• Germany - 51,227

• Great Britain - 34,007

• Ireland - 28,567

• Italy - 3,845

• Hungary - 473

• Greece - 100

• Egypt - 100

Race & Immigration: Eugenics

Race & Immigration: Eugenics

the U.S. saw a particular synergy between eugenic ideas and strategic interests: motivated by political opportunism and (in some measure) racism, Congressman Albert Johnson, chair of the House Committee on Immigration, found in eugenic ideas a powerful justification, apparently backed by nothing less than science itself, for a restrictive immigration policy enjoying, it seemed, increasing public support.

Inspired by British eugenicists, the American eugenics movement originated in the late nineteenth century, and it enjoyed its greatest legislative achievements in the late 1910s and 1920s, peaking with the 1927 Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Bell

American eugenicists focused on the "racial" inferiority of nationalities whose entry into the U.S. threatened the American gene pool. These ideas enjoyed extensive support. Exploiting the "prestige of science," political elites cited eugenic research in support of policies to sterilize selected patients and, as this article illustrates, in support of restrictive immigration policies based on a purportedly scientific hierarchy of "races."

This role interacted favorably with the claim not only that physical traits were reproduced generationally but also that behavior, too, had its roots in biology. Social Darwinism pandered to this tenet, with its claims about the extent to which the offspring of the poor, or the criminal, or the feeble-minded were themselves likely to reproduce these traits

The eugenicists' alarm about racial degeneration reflected their specific fears: that higher birthrates among the genetically inferior would lead to a "menace of the feeble-minded" and that inferior nations, men, and races would, through immigration, under mine American supremacy.

The American eugenicists defined as superior those people descended from Nordic or Aryan stock, and they classed as inferior those of East European, Mediterranean, Asian, African, Native American, or Jewish descent.

Congress gave encouragement to the movement through the appointment of the Dillingham Commission (established in 1907, reporting in 1910). Like the Brock Com- mittee before it, the American commission saw a threat in concentrated pockets of genetic inferiority. While the former believed that "defectives drift to the slums," where "like marries like ... and the chances of two carriers [of defective genes] mating is many times greater than it is in any other section of the population."

The Dillingham Commission argued (from an exhaustive study of seven cities) that "the new immi grant races live largely in colonies .. . and ... are as a class far less intelligent than the old." The commission recommended a series of restrictionist measures: a literacy test to immigrants (enacted in 1917 after many previous failed attempts), a quota by race "

Race & Immigration: Eugenics

Race & Immigration: Eugenics

1900-1910: 49,000 immigrants enter,

50% are Mexicans.

1920: 500,000 Mexicans emigrated

Poverty & unrest in Mexico before 1910

Restrictions on Japanese, like Chinese

Demand for labor in RR, agriculture, mines

Waiver of $5 head tax

Seen as temporary, not staying

Will work in undesirable jobs & locations

Mexican Experience

- Mexican immigration slows to trickle

- Emigration exceeds immigration 3-1

- Violent reaction against Mexicans as cities & states round up and deport them

- Many leave on own out of fear

- In 15 month period in 1931, 2 million Mexicans leave.

Mexican Immigrants During the Depression

WWII: (1942-1964) Treaty with Mexico to contract workers (Bracero Program)

NB: Bracero Website:

Private contracts but feds help recruit

US demand initially small, but soon outstrips visas so in early 1950s growers recruit undocumented.

1942-1946: 4.6 million braceros admitted

1950: 67,000 braceros to 450,000 in 1956

Same time: 5.2 million illegal immigrants arrested.

“Pull” of Mexican Immigrants

Naturalization Law and Race in US History: Segway III

Naturalization Law and Race in US History: Segway III

• 1790 - Congress limits naturalization to white persons

• 1870 - Congress adds African Americans (naturalization limited to “free white persons” and “persons of African descent”)

• 1952 - racial prerequisite for naturalization eliminated

Construction of Racial Difference Supreme Court DecisionsIn re Balsara, 1909 Asian Indians are probably not White Congressional intentU.S. v. Dolla, 1910 Asian Indians are White Ocular inspection of skinU.S. v. Balsara 1910 Asian Indians are White Scientific evidence  In re Sadar Bhagwab Singh, 1917Asian Indians are not White Common knowledge 

Congressional intentIn re Mohan Singh, 1919 Asian Indians are White Scientific evidence  In re Thind, 1920 Asian Indians are White Legal precedentU.S. v. Thind, 1923Asian Indians are not White Common knowledge 

Congressional intentIn re Najour, 1909 Syrians are White Scientific evidenceIn re Mudarri, 1910Syrians are White Scientific evidence 

Legal precedentIn re Ellis, 1910 Syrians are White Common knowledge  Ex parte Shahid, 1913 Syrians are not White Common knowledgeEx parte Dow, 1914 Syrians are not White Common knowledgeIn re Dow, 1914 Syrians are not White Common knowledge 

Congressional intentDow v. U.S., 1915 Syrians are White Scientific evidence 

Congressional intent  Legal precedent

Construction of Racial Difference - Supreme Court Decisions

In re Mallari, 1916 Filipinos are not White No explanationIn re Rallos, 1917 Filipinos are not White Legal precedentU.S. v. Javier, 1927 Filipinos are not White Legal precedentDe La Ysla v. U.S., 1935 Filipinos are not White Legal precedentDe Cano v. State, 1941 Filipinos are not White Legal precedent

In re Halladjian, 1909 Armenians are Whtie Scientific evidence  Legal precedent

U.S. v. Cartozian, 1925 Armenians are White Scientific evidence  Common knowledge   Legal precedent

In re Feroz Din, 1928 Afghanis are not White Common knowledge

In re Ahmed Hassan, 1942 Arabians are not White Common knowledge  Ex parte Mohriez, 1944 Arabians are not White Legal precedent

Images in ImmigrationImages in

Immigration

Chinese

3rd Wave: Eastern European

Acts of 1882, 1884, and 1888 and related legislation

Acts of 1882, 1884, and 1888 and related legislation

• Only Chinese non-laborers and those who were born in the U.S. can enter

• Those who resided in the U.S. prior to 1880 can remain if they don’t leave the country

• If they leave they can come back if they have at least one thousand dollars worth of property or debts owned to them

• The status of wife and child followed that of a husband

• No Chinese could be naturalized as U.S. citizen

Loopholes in LegislationLoopholes in Legislation• Many Chinese were able to get into the U.S. by appealing to U.S.

Courts even after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

• The prohibition of judicial review of immigration decisions did not apply to the Chinese because unlike other immigrants until 1903 they did not come under purview of the Bureau of

Immigration and immigration law

• Judges often ruled in favor of Chinese plaintiffs because they adhered to Anglo-American common law traditions of habeas corpus and evidentiary rules of witness testimony (for

example, did not require two white witnesses)

• Newcomers relied on community groups and white lawyers to make their case for citizenship based on witness

testimony

• This continued until 1905 when the Bureau of Immigration took over Chinese immigration and was granted final

jurisdiction in the question of citizenship

“The Chinese: Many Handed But Soulless,” The Wasp, 1885

“The Chinese: Many Handed But Soulless,” The Wasp, 1885

Some Wasp Images

Cartoon on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Cartoon on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Using photography to emphasize difference

Using photography to emphasize difference

Construction of Racial Difference - Emphasizing difference

Construction of Racial Difference - Emphasizing difference

Construction of Racial Difference > Emphasizing differenceConstruction of Racial Difference > Emphasizing difference

Alfred Stieglitz, “The Steerage,” 1907Alfred Stieglitz, “The Steerage,” 1907

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/stieglitz_a.html

Construction of Racial Difference > Jacob Riis, “Bandit’s Roost, 59 1/2 Mulberry Street,” c. 1888Construction of Racial Difference > Jacob Riis, “Bandit’s Roost, 59 1/2 Mulberry Street,” c. 1888

Jacob Riis Works

Construction of Racial Difference > Jacob Riis, “Bandit’s Roost,” How the Other Half Lives (1890)Construction of Racial Difference > Jacob Riis, “Bandit’s Roost,” How the Other Half Lives (1890)

Construction of Racial Difference > Jacob Riis, “Mullen’s Alley, Cherry Hill,” 1888Construction of Racial Difference > Jacob Riis, “Mullen’s Alley, Cherry Hill,” 1888

Construction of Racial Difference > “Home of an Italian Ragpicker,” 1888Construction of Racial Difference > “Home of an Italian Ragpicker,” 1888

Construction of Racial Difference > “One of Four Pedlars Who Slept in the Cellar of 11 Ludlow Street Rear,” c. 1892Construction of Racial Difference > “One of Four Pedlars Who Slept in the Cellar of 11 Ludlow Street Rear,” c. 1892

Immigration Waves > The Godfather, Part II (1974)Immigration Waves > The Godfather, Part II (1974)

Nativism in Early 20thNativism in Early 20thCities, where most immigrants settled, were derided and feared as places filled with dangerous people and radical ideas

:These sentiments were often formulated by intellectuals, but they resonated with many white Americans who were reared in rather parochial and homogenous rural and small town environments.

Most old-stock Americans in the late nineteenth century were appalled at the growing evils of industrialization, immigration, and urbanization.

Henry Adams, the descendent of two American presidents and a noted man of letters, expressed virulent nativism and anti-Semitism

Henry Ford, "looked upon big cities as cesspools of iniquity, soulless, and artificial" Through his general magazine, the Dearborn Independent, Ford spread his hatred of the "international Jewish conspiracy "to a mass audience during the 1920s.

It is no surprise that membership in the KK spiked during this era: "Speeches by Ku Klux Klan members (against immigrants) were virtually indistinguishable in substance and language, if not in style, from the writings of many university professors."

Nativism: Ku Klux Klan Marching in DCNativism: Ku Klux Klan Marching in DC

Immigration Restriction > Cartoon on the Literacy TestImmigration Restriction > Cartoon on the Literacy Test

Immigration Restriction > Cartoon on the Quota Act of 1921Immigration Restriction > Cartoon on the Quota Act of 1921

Rise in Legal Immigrants

1950s: 2.5 million

1960s: 3.3 million

1970s: 4.5 million

1980s: 7.3 million

1990s: 9.1 million – biggest decade

Modern Echoes

In the 1990s: over half of US workforce growth was from immigrants.

2000-2005: immigrants accounted for 86% of increase in US employment (about 50% were Hispanics of which 50% Mexican).

For next 20 years, no net increase is predicted in the number of prime working-age natives (ages 15-54).

Immigrants satisfy a U.S. demand